PROTEIN STRUCTURE REPORT Structure of a novel thermostable GH51 a-L-arabinofuranosidase from Thermotoga petrophila RKU-1
Tatiana A.C.B. Souza,1 Camila R. Santos,1 Angelica R. Souza,1 Daiane P. Oldiges,1 Roberto Ruller,2 Rolf A. Prade,3 Fabio M. Squina,2 and Mario T. Murakami1* 1
Laborato´rio Nacional de Biocieˆncias (LNBio), Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais, Campinas, Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil Laborato´rio Nacional de Cieˆncia e Tecnologia do Bioetanol (CTBE), Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais, Campinas, Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil
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3
Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma
Received 19 May 2011; Accepted 1 July 2011 DOI: 10.1002/pro.693 Published online 27 July 2011 proteinscience.org
Abstract: a-L-arabinofuranosidases (EC 3.2.1.55) participate in the degradation of a variety of Larabinose-containing polysaccharides and interact synergistically with other hemicellulases in the production of oligosaccharides and bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass into biofuels. In this work, the structure of a novel thermostable family 51 (GH51) a-L-arabinofuranosidase from Thermotoga petrophila RKU-1 (TpAraF) was determined at 3.1 A˚ resolution. The TpAraF tertiary structure consists of an (a/b)-barrel catalytic core associated with a C-terminal b-sandwich domain, which is stabilized by hydrophobic contacts. In contrast to other structurally characterized GH51 AraFs, the accessory domain of TpAraF is intimately linked to the active site by a long b-hairpin motif, which modifies the catalytic cavity in shape and volume. Sequence and structural analyses indicate that this motif is unique to Thermotoga AraFs. Small angle X-ray scattering investigation showed that TpAraF assembles as a hexamer in solution and is preserved at the optimum catalytic temperature, 65°C, suggesting functional significance. Crystal packing analysis shows that the biological hexamer encompasses a dimer of trimers and the multiple oligomeric interfaces are predominantly fashioned by polar and electrostatic contacts. Keywords: glycosyl hydrolase family 51; thermostable a-L-arabinofuranosidase; structure; oligomerization; Thermotoga petrophila RKU-1
Abbreviations: AraFs, a-L-arabinofuranosidases; CD, circular dichroism; DLS, dynamic light scattering; GH51, glycosyl hydrolase family 51; Rg, gyration radius; SAXS, small angle X-ray scattering; TpAraF, a-L-arabinofuranosidase from Thermotoga petrophila RKU-1. Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article. RAP and FMS are authors of patent WO 2010/083518 A2 licensed to Edenspace Corporation, US. Tatiana A.C.B. Souza and Camila R. Santos contributed equally to this work. Grant sponsors: Fundac¸a˜o de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sa˜o Paulo; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientı´fico e Tecnolo´gico; US Department of Energy *Correspondence to: Mario T. Murakami, Laborato´rio Nacional de Biocieˆncias (LNBio), Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais, Rua Giuseppe Maximo Scolfaro, 10000, Campinas-SP, Brazil, 13083-970. E-mail:
[email protected]
C 2011 The Protein Society Published by Wiley-Blackwell. V
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Introduction Hemicellulose and pectin are polymers that account for 25–35% of all lignocellulosic biomass.1 L-arabinosyl residues are widely distributed as side chains of these polymers and participate in plant cell wall crosslinking affecting form and function of hemicelluloses and pectins.2 L-arabinofuranoside substitution is also observed in xylans and the presence of these modified side chains restricts enzymatic hydrolysis by xylanases and pectinases.3–5 The a-L-arabinofuranosidases are complementing enzymes that catalyze the hydrolysis of terminal nonreducing a-1,2-, a-1,3-, and a-1,5-L-arabinofuranosyl residues1,4,6 and act in combination with other enzymes to depolymerize arabinose-containing polysaccharides.6–9 Enzymatic hydrolysis of polysaccharides has been successfully used in several industrial processes5,10 including pulp and paper bleaching,11,12 production of oligosaccharides,13 and pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for bioethanol production.4,14 The ability of extremophilic enzymes to maintain their function under extreme conditions plays a key role in organism survival at physically or geochemically extreme environments and is of great importance for biotechnological processes, in which harsh conditions are required.15 Moreover, elevated temperatures result in higher reaction velocities, reduced risk of contamination and enhanced substrate solubility,16 thus, highlighting
the advantages of the use of thermostable enzymes in industrial processes. Thermotoga petrophila (T. petrophila) RKU-1 is a hyperthermophilic bacterium isolated from the Kubiki oil reservoir in Japan17 whose thermostable GH51 a-L-arabinofuranosidase was functionally characterized.18 TpAraF displays an optimal activity at 65 C, pH 6.0 and remains active for several hours at 90 C.18 Herein, we have structurally characterized TpAraF using X-ray crystallography, small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and spectroscopy, providing data regarding protein stability, oligomerization and describing a unique motif in TpAraF, which modifies the active-site pocket.
Results and Discussion b-hairpin motif modifies the active site of Thermotoga GH51 AraFs ˚ resoluThe structure of TpAraF was solved at 3.1 A tion (Table 1) by molecular replacement method using the atomic coordinates of the a-L-arabinofuranosidase from Geobacillus stearothermophilus T6 (PDB ID: 1PZ3).19 TpAraF comprises 484 amino acid residues folded into two domains: a catalytic domain with the frequently encountered (a/b)-barrel architecture and a C-terminal domain with a b-sandwich fold (Fig. 1A). Among GH51 a-L-arabinofuranosidases (GH51 AraFs) with known three-dimensional
Table I. Data Collection and Refinement Statistics Data collection Beamline ˚) Wavelength (A Space group ˚ , ) Unit-cell parameters (A ˚) Resolution range (A No. of unique reflections Multiplicitya Completeness (%) Rmergeb (%) ˚ 3.Da1) Matthews coefficient (A Corresponding solvent (%) Model refinement Protein data bank ID Number of protein chains Number of water molecules Rworkc (%) Rfree (%) ˚) R.m.s.d. from ideal bond lengths (A R.m.s.d. from ideal angles ( ) ˚ 2) Average B-factor (A Ramachandran plot Most favored regions (%) Allowed regions (%) Disallowed regions (%) a b
W01B-MX2, LNLS 1.459 P 21 a ¼ 105.95, b ¼ 187.29, c ¼ 180.87, b ¼ 90.87 29.87–3.10 (3.15–3.10) 137,752 (13,341) 3.1 (2.9) 97.0 (89.5) 7.4 (2.0) 12.4 (45.4) 2.7 54.7 3S2C 12 433 19.5 26.8 0.010 1.389 45.6 90.6 8.0 1.3
Values for the outermost resolution shell are given in parentheses. P P P P Rmerge ¼ hkl i jIi ðhklÞ hIðhklÞij= hkl i Ii ðhklÞ, where Ii(hkl) is the intensity of the ith observation of reflec-
tion hkl and is the average over all observations of reflection hkl. P P Rwork ¼ hkl jjFobs j jFcalc jj= hkl jFobs j, where Fobs and Fcalc are the observed and calculated structure-factor amplitudes, respectively. Rfree is Rwork calculated using 5% of the data that were omitted from refinement. c
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Structure and Oligomerization of Thermotoga GH51 arabinofuranosidases
Figure 1. The structure of the GH51 a-L-arabinofuranosidase from T. petrophila (TpAraF). (A) Cartoon representation of the two-domain architecture of TpAraF, which consists of a (a/b)-barrel domain (gray; b-strands highlighted in blue) fused to a Cterminal domain with a b-sandwich fold (pink). (B) Active-site residues of TpAraF (carbon atoms in blue) highlighting the presence of the residue F378 (carbon atoms in green) from the accessory domain. (C) Surface electrostatic potential of TpAraF. The colors red, white, and blue indicate negative, neutral, and positive charges, respectively. The circle indicates the active-site pocket. (D) Superpositioning of TpAraF structure on GH51 AraFs from G. stearothermophilus (PDB ID: 1PZ3), C. Thermocellum (PDB ID: 2C7F) and T. xylanilyticus (PDB ID: 2VRK). The b-hairpin motif, unique to Thermotoga sp., is shown in blue. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
structure,19–21 the (a/b)-barrel domain (residues 1359) is conserved. The key residues found in the active site of GH51 AraFs have already been determined19 and those residues (F24, E26, R66, N71, W96, N171, E172, H235, Y237, E281, W285, and Q326; TpAraF numbering) are fully conserved in TpAraF (Fig. 1B). Analysis of the electrostatic surface distribution showed a negatively charged surface around the active site (Fig. 1C) that is highly populated by acidic residues and is strictly required for substrate recognition. Despite the high conservation of the catalytic domain and the residues involved in the catalysis, TpAraF contains an insertion of a b-hairpin motif between the b1 and b2 elements of the accessory domain that is not observed in other GH51 AraFs with known structures (Fig. 1D). This motif is stabilized by a number of hydrophobic contacts with the parental catalytic domain and modifies the active site in volume and shape. Notably, the long b-hairpin delivers the residue F378 at the entrance of the active site forming with other aromatic gate-keepers (W96, Y174, W177, Y237, and W285) the carbohydratebinding site (Fig. 1B). Interestingly, sequence alignment showed that this insertion is unique to Thermotoga suggesting an exclusive evolutionary feature
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in these organisms (Supporting Information, Fig. S1 and Table S1).
TpAraF is a hexamer under optimum temperature for catalysis Twelve molecules of TpAraF were found in asymmetric unit that corresponds to two hexamers. Since the TpAraF crystallographic structure suggests a hexameric quaternary structure, SAXS measurements at 65 C were performed to evaluate the biological assembly under optimum temperature for catalysis. The experimental SAXS curve and pairdistance distribution function p(r) for TpAraF are displayed in Figure 2 and were calculated by GNOM.22 The gyration radius (Rg) calculated from SAXS is 4.55 6 0.01 nm and agrees with the crystallographic hexamer. The low-resolution envelope of TpAraF was determined using the program DAMMIN.23 An averaged model was generated from several runs using the suite of programs DAMAVER.24 The theoretical scattering curve, calculated from the crystallographic hexamer (CRYSOL program25), showed to be very similar to the experimental SAXS data supporting the observed hexamer.19–21
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Figure 2. Oligomerization of TpAraF. (A) Scattering curve and pair-distance distribution function p(r) (inset) for TpAraF at 65 C. (B) Cartoon representation of the crystallographic hexamer (colored by subunits) fitted into the SAXS envelope (transparent surface). [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
˚ in diThe crystallographic hexamer is 117 A ameter and can be viewed as a dimer of trimers, similar to what was observed with other GH51 AraFs.19–21 Each subunit makes multiple intermolecular contacts with other three subunits of the hexamer, which is the structural basis for high thermal tolerance of the biological assembly. Each inter˚ 2 that is relamolecular interface comprises 700 A tively small and cannot be attributed as stable; however, taking into account all interfaces they ˚ 2, which is coherent with the exresult in 2,400 A perimental observed stability. The key residues involved in hexamer stabilization are H77, E99, D132, N146, Y148, E176, H181, E186, R189, K192, E193, K196, E255, K261, K262, and K363 (Supporting Information, Figure S2). Although the intermolecular interfaces are conserved among GH51 AraFs from Geobacillus stearothermophilus, Thermobacillus xylanilyticus (T. xylanilyticus), and Clostridium thermocellum (C. Thermocellum), the residues involved in the oligomerization of TpAraF are predominantly polar and participate in the formation of salt bridges and hydrogen bonds, which are considered essential for thermal stability (Supporting Information, Table S2). Since the hexameric assembly is stabilized by salt bridges and hydrogen bonds, TpAraF stability was investigated by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy in the presence of different concentrations of NaCl (0, 1, 2, and 3 M). Far-UV CD spectra showed that TpAraF remains folded in all tested conditions with no significant loss in the secondary structure contents (Supporting Information, Fig. S3). DLS data indicate that the size distribution profile of TpAraF remains the same in all tested conditions (data not shown) and thus, despite the large contribution of electrostatic interactions in the oligomerization, high salt concentrations do not destabilize the hexamer. These
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results strongly suggest that the TpAraF hexamer is biologically relevant, first observed in the crystal structure and later confirmed with SAXS, CD, and DLS as remaining intact and active in solution even under high salt conditions and temperature, indicating that the hexamer is a natural occurrence and necessary for proper enzymatic function. It remains to be determined how six catalytic centers act on hydrolyzing arabinofuranosidic bonds on branched arabinoxylan molecules.
Material and Methods Protein expression and purification TpAraF was expressed and purified as previously described.18 Briefly, Escherichia coli BL21(DE3)DSlyD cells harboring plasmid pRARE2 were transformed with pET28a/TpAraF plasmid and plated in selective solid LB medium. Induction was performed with 0.5-mM IPTG at 30 C for 4 h. Harvested cells were resuspended in lysis buffer (20-mM sodium phosphate pH 7.5, 500-mM NaCl, 5-mM imidazole, 1-mM benzamidine and 5-mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride) and lysed by sonication. The soluble fraction was further submitted to nickel-affinity and size-exclusion chromatographies. The purified TpAraF was analyzed by SDS-PAGE and protein concentration was determined at 280 nm using the molar extinction coefficient (94,115 M1 cm1).
SAXS measurements SAXS data were collected at the D02A/SAXS2 beamline (Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory, Campinas, Brazil). The radiation wavelength was set to ˚ and a 165-mm MarCCD detector was used to 1.48 A record the scattering patterns. Protein samples were prepared in 20-mM sodium phosphate buffer pH 7.5 containing 150-mM NaCl. Before X-ray exposure,
Structure and Oligomerization of Thermotoga GH51 arabinofuranosidases
the samples were centrifuged at 20,000 g for 10 min. SAXS measurements were carried out at the optimum temperature for catalysis (65 C). Frames with exposure time of 600 s were recorded. Background scattering was subtracted from the protein scattering pattern, which was then normalized and corrected. Experimental data fitting and evaluation of the pair-distance distribution function p(r) were performed using the program GNOM.22 The low-resolution envelope of TpAraF was determined using ab initio modeling as implemented in the program DAMMIN.23 An averaged model was generated from several runs using the suite of programs DAMAVER.24 The low-resolution model and the atomic coordinates were superimposed using the program SUPCOMB.26
Crystallization, structure determination, and refinement Crystals of TpAraF were grown in 100-mM bis-Tris pH 5.5, 200-mM ammonium acetate, 40%(v/v) MPD and 1%(v/v) dioxane and submitted to X-ray diffraction at the W01B-MX2 beamline (Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory, Campinas, Brazil) as previously mentioned.18 Data were indexed, integrated, merged, and scaled using the HKL2000 package.27 TpAraF structure was solved by molecular replacement method using the program BALBES28 and the atomic coordinates of the a-L-arabinofuranosidase from Geobacillus stearothermophilus T6 (PDB ID: 1PZ3).19 The model was examined and manually fitted based on the 2Fo-Fc and Fo-Fc electron density maps using the program COOT.29 Isotropic restrained refinement was performed using the program REFMAC5.30 Model quality was assessed using MOLPROBITY.31 Data collection and refinement statistics are shown in Table 1.
Accession number The atomic coordinates and structure factors have been deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB entry 3S2C).
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Structure and Oligomerization of Thermotoga GH51 arabinofuranosidases
